Andrew looked out the window until he’d forced his expression neutral. A strange heat blossomed in his chest, and it was taking too long to pack it back into a manageable corner.All I care about right now is you.He was liked by the boy who liked no one at all, and he wanted it to stay that way so much it hurt.
Thomas’s face darkened as he watched Clemens settling into the driver’s seat. “I’d drag Clemens into the forest and let the monsters have him if I could. I’d sit back and watch.” He slouched in his seat with a glower.
Andrew didn’t disagree.
The bus pulled out of Wickwood and the world blurred through all shades of dark green as the forests whipped past their windows. Thomas fell asleep on Andrew’s shoulder, his mouth open and the angry lines of his face softening in a way that made Andrew ache.
He put in earbuds, but didn’t listen to anything.
Everyone was rowdy and talkative, and a few kids kept swapping seats with whispered giggles until Clemens ordered an end to it. But Dove slid into the empty row in front of Andrew and he felt breathless with relief that she had come after all. He had this odd, suffocating need to be sure she was all right, neverhurt, never in danger. This time,hewould be the twin made protector.
Thomas was still asleep, so Andrew leaned forward so his chin rested on the back of her seat before he tapped her shoulder. “Why aren’t you sitting with Lana?”
“Checking up on you.” Dove lightly flicked his nose, so his face wrinkled. “Also I called you, but you didn’t answer?”
An image of the forest devouring his phone flashed in Andrew’s mind. “I need to charge my phone.” He needed tofindit. Fast.
“Well, you have to answer when I’m calling you. I need to know you’re coping.” She said it in a fussy way, as if he were a child who would wander off and get lost before starting to cry.
It burrowed between his ribs, the frustration of it. Everyone saw Andrew as shattered and fragile, and maybe he was to them. But when Thomas looked at Andrew’s sharp edges, he thought them dangerous and beautiful—not weak.
He could cut me to bloody pieces if he wanted.
Andrew hated the way he loved those words.
FOURTEEN
Traffic delayed their arrival in the city, and then the stop by a coffee shop lost them another half hour, so the bus reached the art gallery late enough to make Andrew antsy. The tour started and the class dribbled through the immaculate building with their notebooks and sketchbooks out. Ms. Poppy glowed seven times brighter as she floated between paintings. When she passed Thomas, she squeezed his shoulder and chatted to him about pushing through artist blocks by refilling his “creative well.” Thomas twitched, but nodded.
His face darkened to thunderclouds as the morning wore on and he couldn’t do a single sketch. He picked at his bite scabs and stayed close to Andrew.
When the morning finally ended and the class was to be released for their precious hours of free time, they assembled at the bus for a lecture about boundaries. Everyone wanted to hit the closest mall and cinema, anyway. Deprive rich kids of ways to spend their parents’ money and they go all out once released.
Andrew and Thomas went the opposite way.
“I don’t have my phone to look up the nearest art store,” Andrew said.
“We’ll do it the good ol’ fashioned way.” Thomas power-walked across the street and Andrew had to run to keep up.
“Ask directions?” he said.
“What? No. Walk around until we find one.”
They wasted fifteen minutes before Thomas gave in and asked for directions. Then they tumbled into a cozy arts-and-crafts store, its walls lined with rainbow tubes of paint and white canvases. The second they entered, Thomas’s whole body relaxed, his eyes brightening as if, for the first time in weeks, he had a chance to breathe. He touched everything. Tested Copic markers and inspected oil paints. Hovered in the background while a man conducted a paint-mixing tutorial. He almost kissed the shelves of pencils and charcoals until Andrew had to cough to hide his laugh.
They stocked up on everything. “You should throw your old stuff out,” Andrew said.
“Yeah, I guess.” Thomas didn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe just that one sketchbook was cursed.”
“No, get rid of it all—”
“You know I can’t afford to.” Thomas kept his back to Andrew as he inspected stacks of boxed charcoals. He rapped the edge of the shelf in a poor display of nonchalance, but his shoulders had tensed, knuckles white with the effort of clenching back some twisting emotion. “I have nothing now, Andrew. My parents barely gave me money before, and now… well, obviously they can’t.” His voice had gone tight. “No one’s even told me what’s happening with the investigation. I guess the cops contacted my aunt… She’ll probably deal with the house and, like, the finance stuff. I don’t know. Not like she’s talking to me.”
Andrew frowned, but didn’t answer. It felt like finding apaper cut in the corner of his month, a sting both sharp and surprising. Thomas had him. He would never have nothing.
Andrew reached over Thomas’s shoulder and collected a few boxes of charcoals, and the silent weight of the declaration that he would pay, that he would take care of this, made Thomas seem smaller than before. But he didn’t have to make it athing. Money barely felt real to Andrew anyway, what with its sudden appearance in his life and the inevitability that someday it would vanish as fast as it had come. Good things didn’t last; they felt like a daydream he’d lose sight of if he shook himself fully awake.
“You haven’t lost anything with them gone.” Andrew said it with such softness that his mouth barely moved, not sure if Thomas would lash out, but unable to cage the words.
